I guess no one should be surprised that politicians, many of whom are lawyers or spend all their time around lawyers, think and speak like lawyers.

The latest revelations into the investigation into the Mike Duffy expense scandal does seem to confirm what staff in the Prime Minister’s Office have previously said. According to court filings made by RCMP investigators, when senior Conservative staffers said they were out of the loop on now-departed chief of staff Nigel Wright’s decision to write a personal cheque to cover Mike Duffy’s improperly claimed expenses, they were telling the truth. Just not much more than the truth.

The story that is emerging is that, at first, members of the Prime Minister’s inner circle were open to the idea of making the Duffy situation go away by using party funds — some of which would be partially subsidized by taxpayers — to write him a cheque. When they realized that Duffy owed $90,000, instead of the $32,000 the party had expected, that deal was pulled. Whether because the party was too cheap or simply realized that the optics of $90,000 and $32,000 is a different animal is not clear, but whatever the reason, the deal was dead.

Multiple media reports Thursday night detailed the allegations in court documents filed by the RCMP. They also reportedly allege the deal was discussed inside the Prime Minister’s Office and included provisions that Duffy not speak to the media.

The timeline there is key. The RCMP filing makes it clear that a good number of people close to Stephen Harper knew about the original plan. But after that plan was pulled, either Wright went totally solo in making his offer to Duffy, or those close to the Prime Minister worked really, really hard to see no evil. Either way, they were all shocked — shocked, I say! — when Wright did personally what the PMO had decided not to do in an official, party capacity.

Cute. But probably legitimate. Knowing what not to know always has been, and always will be, part of politics. The Prime Minister’s staffers seem to have stuck very carefully to their official stories. That’s politics, as designed by lawyers. It’s not, as NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus says, incompetence on the part of the Prime Minister. It’s cynical but effective maneuvering by his staffers. Protecting the Boss from this sort of thing is half of why he employs them.

The real story, it seems, lies not in who in the PMO knew exactly what, and when, but what the RCMP seems to be concluding Mike Duffy was up to well before this all came to light. The Mounties are taking this seriously — apparently, the RCMP has concluded that Duffy was willfully defrauding the government through repeated bogus expense claims. Anyone can screw up little things, and some people can even screw up big things. But the RCMP investigation seems to have concluded that Duffy’s expense habits reflect a sustained and deliberate effort to claim public monies to which he was not legally entitled.

Duffy has always been a big fundraising draw for the Tories, and not a bad campaigner, either. He did a lot of work for the party during the last election, bolstering the campaign efforts of Tory candidates across the country. And he was reportedly billing the government at the same time.

This includes, of course, claiming to live in Prince Edward Island while actually having a health card and voter registration documents in Ontario. That’s a bit of a giveaway. But it’s also about the per diem expenses that Duffy was claiming, saying he was on official Senate business, when he was either vacationing outside of the country or actually doing partisan work for the Tories.

Duffy has always been a big fundraising draw for the Tories, and not a bad campaigner, either. He did a lot of work for the party during the last election, bolstering the campaign efforts of Tory candidates across the country. And he was reportedly billing the government at the same time.

The RCMP is reportedly expanding their investigation, looking back further into his Senate history. They are also interested in his financial records going back to at least 2008. This is rapidly becoming a full-blown criminal probe, and if these allegations are determined to have merit, it is entirely possible that Duffy could in fact be facing arrest and prosecution for fraud.

That would be a stunning fall from grace for a long-time CTV broadcaster and Conservative party big-shot. Prime Minister Harper would get some egg on his face, given that he’s the one who appointed him. But whatever may come for Duffy, it’s entirely possible that the PM won’t wear much of it. His staffers seem to have done exactly what they needed to do make sure that as Duffy went down in flames, he only singed the Prime Minister.

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